Pace neutrality and how we talk about our running

How being objective about our running is good for us and for others.

When I was regularly swimming, I’d often have to answer the question: are you fast or slow? Turing up at pools to swim there would be lanes labelled as fast, slow and medium and I, along with every other swimmer, would have to select which one I jumped into. I very rarely ventured into the fast lane unless it was unoccupied and then would quickly dip under the lane ropes if another swimmer entered.

Running doesn’t have quite the same set-up and yet we still put labels on ourselves. I’d often have runners turn up to my running groups for the first time who would say to me, almost apologetically, before they’d run a single step “I’m not very fast” or “I’m really slow”. I doubt anyone ever turned up for a running group called ‘Lazy Girl Running’ who believe themselves to be ‘fast’. But where do you draw the line between fast, slow and everything in between? Fast and slow are relative terms and we’d all draw those lines in different places.